The Government has asked the Productivity Commission to review urban planning rules and processes, and identify the most appropriate system for land use allocation, Finance Minister Bill English says.

“Urban planning in New Zealand not only underpins housing affordability but also the productivity of the wider economy,” Mr English says.

“Many parts of the regime are out-dated and unwieldy, having been developed over the years in a piecemeal fashion. International best practice has moved on and so must New Zealand.”

The Productivity Commission will undertake a first principles review of the urban planning rules that fall under Acts such as the Local Government Act, the Resource Management Act and the Land Transport Management Act, to ensure they support a responsive housing market.

“The Commission will also consider ways to ensure the future regime is flexible and able to respond to changing demands.”

There have not been many occasions in its seven years in office when the current government has pleasantly surprised me, but this was one of them.

“Most New Zealanders live in cities, and cities are places where most of the country’s economic activity occurs. It’s important that our planning system effectively controls harms to people and the environment, makes enough room and infrastructure available for homes, businesses and industry, and responds quickly to change,” said Commission Chair, Murray Sherwin.

“Cities across New Zealand face a range of challenges. Fast growing cities like Auckland are finding it difficult to provide enough capacity to house their rising populations, while others face the problem of maintaining essential services and infrastructure with flat or declining populations. Urban areas need a planning system that can respond effectively and efficiently to these pressures.”

“Our inquiry will explore the development of the current planning system in New Zealand, assess its performance compared to other countries, and identify where change is needed. The aim is not to draft new laws ourselves, but set out what a high-performing planning system would look like.”

The government’s terms of reference for this inquiry have not yet been released, so we’ll have to wait and see what, if any, constraints have been put on this particular inquiry.

I’m cautiously optimistic that the Commission will come up with something useful as it pulls together its report over the next year – although ideas of private choice, preferences, markets, and knowledge limitations need to weigh at least as heavily as smarter government and better plans.

But it is worth bearing in mind that the current government has already been in office for seven years, and has achieved very little in respect of liberalising the rather dead-hand of the regulatory state in this area. By the time the inquiry report emerges, the government will be eight years old and just about to head into an election year. Major reforming legislation seems unlikely in 2017, and who knows what lies beyond that year’s election. Have fourth term governments been known for their bold reforms (late Seddon, late Massey, 1946-49, 1969-72)? Is a government in which the Greens are full members, or are relied on for confidence and supply, likely to be one that introduces far-reaching reforms to make the land and housing markets work more flexibly and effectively? And the Productivity Commission seems to have a hankering for more powers for central government – more so, at least judging by their most recent report, than they favour more powers for individuals and more reliance on the market. But more powers for central government might seem appealing if a particular central government shares one’s vision, but rather less so in other cases.

Perhaps the best we can really hope for is an authoritative document that will be mined for workable nuggets in the following decade or two? But that, in itself, would be no small achievement.

I’ve noted previously that I’m not aware of examples where far-reaching planning regimes once in place have been materially unwound, enabling housing to become consistently more affordable and responsive to the needs and interests of potential purchasers. Impressively, the Productivity Commission says its issues paper for this inquiry will be out only six weeks from now. I hope they use that opportunity to draw our attention to any liberalising experiences abroad they are aware of. And as the Commission has come across as rather sympathetic to the desire of councils to promote “compact urban forms”, I hope they consider the historical data suggesting that as cities have become richer they have tended to become less dense, not more dense.

It would be interesting to know what prompted this belated request from the government. I wonder if the Hsieh and Moretti paper has played a part? Certainly the Minister now talks of “urban planning in New Zealand…underpins…the productivity of the wider economy”, and the Commission was slightly breathless in its enthusiasm for the results

Quantifying the size of the prize is difficult, but it could be significant. One US study (Hsieh & Moretti, 2015) estimates that lowering regulatory constraints on land supply in three high-productivity US cities – New York, San Francisco and San Jose – to that of the median level of restrictiveness in the United States would increase GDP by 9.5%. A productivity bonus anywhere near this level would be of major significance to the New Zealand economy. Indeed, it is difficult to think of many other policies that would yield such an improvement in the nation’s economy.

I’m all in favour of much less heavily regulated land use, but I remain pretty sceptical about size of any aggregate productivity gains that such reforms might offer. Well-functioning markets in affordable housing would be a great gain in their own right. But papers like that of Hsieh and Moretti need a great deal more scrutiny before putting much weight on the idea that urban planning reform offers very large gains in productivity or GDP per capita. It would be interesting, for example, to see some detailed scrutiny of comparisons between San Francisco and New York on the one hand, and Atlanta and Houston on the other. And cross-country comparative analysis would also be interesting, including taking account of the economic fortunes of such cities (with tight land use and building restrictions) such as Sydney and London.

And I was curious about the timing of the announcement. When an announcement is slipped out on the day of World Cup final, it doesn’t suggest any great desire on the 9th floor to draw much attention to the new work. And consistent with that, perhaps, the capital’s daily newspaper, awash in black, does not even report the announcement (UPDATE: nor, as far as I can see, does the Herald).

The recent Productivity Commission report has a nice summary of the evolution of the planning regime in New Zealand. Some time ago, browsing on the Ministry of Justice website [1] I stumbled on this snippet, from the speech of a Cabinet minister introducing to Parliament New Zealand’s first piece of town planning legislation in 1926:

Cities and towns in the Dominion at the present time have no schemes of town planning and the sooner the controlling authorities have the power and set to work and draft such schemes the better for themselves and the people generally.

Perhaps the councils benefited, but it less clear how “the people generally” – and especially those wanting reasonable housing for themselves and their children – have come to benefit. Perhaps the new Commission report will help answer that question.

UPDATE: The Terms of Reference for the new inquiry are here. As a quick reaction:

a. They seem to take too much for granted the need for an “urban planning system”

c. The list of those the Commission is enjoined to consult is lengthy, and almost exclusively parties with vested interests in the process. Many will have useful specialised knowledge, but there is no emphasis on property owners, potential house purchasers and the like.

d. The Commission is enjoined not to undertake what might “constitute a critique of previous or ongoing reforms to the systems of legislation that make the urban planning system”.

11 thoughts on “Another Productivity Commission inquiry”

The PC is good at identifying problems, but seemingly less so at pointing to practical solutions. Central Government claims that Local Government zoning is the problem. LG says that isn’t so, the problem is the cost of infrastructure and the need to ensure a city’s densification plans garner residents’ support (or at least acquiescence). In any case there is clearly market failure with material adverse consequences. What I don’t understand is government’s (central and local) unwillingness to use the Public Works Act to buy land that could then be used for intensive urban development. It isn’t hard to find very low intensity-of-use property in Auckland in Wellington which is being land-banked. If it were required for a road the PWA would be used to buy it up. Why not do the same thing to create land that is available for residential development? Is this just a function of government, preferring to create a smoke screen rather than taking strong direct actions that could carry a property rights connotation ?

The hard part of compulsory acquisition is coming up with a fair market value that is agreeable by both parties. There are plenty of lawyers ready to take up legal action on a pay on winning basis. The government would be tied up in court action and nothing gets built and they would look rather foolish.

There would be aggrieved parties that would never agree to any price which would then be a public relations nightmare.

It also opens up a can of worms with the Treaty of Waitangi afterall excess crown land gives Iwi first right of refusal which means that the government has to become the developer and take on the development risk of that land and is not able to sell freely to a developer. also in the sale of the developed apartments, Iwi would likely demand first right of refusal under the treaty.

Hopefully given it is a first principles review – they consider both compensation AND betterment. I read the ToRs and it is not made explicit. It must be some kind of ideological barrier that sees us fail every time to consider betterment when considering matters to do with property rights.

Sounds more like govt failure than market failure to me – though quite which arm of government is perhaps debatable.

I get queasy at the idea of using the PWA for housing – seems all too reminiscent of Kelo – altho I grant that a shift to land value rating is also, in effect, a step in the same direction, and I don’t have a problem with that.

The difficulty with taxing undeveloped land is that, not all available land is able to be developed. Auckland has a lot of slopes and hilly terrain, streams and rivers, gullies. The cost to develop is just too prohibitive. Also not all land is registered. We still have Maori land that is not subject to any of the usual protocols.

But if the land is not able to be developed it won’t have much of an economic value, so I’m not sure that is a strong argument. Auckland being a more habitable place than Wellington, it has rather fewer steep hillsides etc than Wgtn and I’m constantly amazed at the sections that are built on here (no doubt at vast expense). I’m sympathetic to land value rating, and to a land tax (at least if it had been put in place in 1840 and left on since), but would be interested in any empirical studies on whether land value rating vs capital value rating has anywhere been enough to make much difference to land supply. I suspect it is an impossible question to answer, as land value rating schemes are more likely to be adopted by councils that are more generally in favour of improving land supply, and using more land (rather than just using existing urban land more intensely) and are facilitating that thru their other rules and processes.

Then the argument arises as to what is an economic value. There may be a ratings valuation that the council decides it is worth because a neighbouring property on a flat section with services has that value compared with yours that may be in a gully but is twice the area but the cost to develop is far too high on your hopeless section compared with your neighbour which is an easy build. Is it fair that I pay twice the land tax on a piece of land that is prohibitive, may be due to some power lines that require a 12 metre distance on the entire length of the power lines?

Reasonable question, but don’t councils pay valuation firms (QV) to answer it, in estimating the values of properties? No doubt there would be mistakes, as there are at present, but there is an appeal/review process.